


Autumn

by Elsey8



Series: Akekita Week 2020 [1]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Akechi Goro Lives, Akekita Week, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, M/M, Married Couple, Self-Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:22:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27474958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsey8/pseuds/Elsey8
Summary: Goro has never been a fan of autumn, but his husband has always had a knack for changing his mind.For Akekita Week, Day 1: Autumn(I’m a week late don’t worry about it)
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Kitagawa Yusuke
Series: Akekita Week 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2007616
Comments: 6
Kudos: 20
Collections: Akekita Week





	Autumn

The leaves make soft crunching sounds under Goro’s boots as he walks through the park with Yusuke. The air is crisp, weather chilling slightly as they get into November. Goro is warm enough, his jacket pulled tight around him and gloves acting as a good way to keep his hands warm. 

He’s always had poor circulation, fingers and toes always the first of him to freeze up in the colder months. It was the initial reason he started wearing gloves, before they became more of a symbol to him than anything. Now they’ve returned to their original purpose, to make sure his hands stay warm enough for him to stay outside for more than a few minutes at a time. 

“My love, are you hungry?” Yusuke asks. 

Goro is snapped out of his thoughts as he follows where Yusuke is looking to a food stand selling yakisoba. He isn’t that hungry, but Yusuke’s eyes are watching the vendor hand out servings ravenously. 

“I could eat,” he answers. 

Yusuke’s bare hand is gripped tightly in his gloved one, and it tugs him along towards the stand at just a slight faster pace than they were walking before. The hint of excitement that Goro doubts most people would notice, but he’s picked up since he started spending this much time with Yusuke. Especially since they’ve been married for over a year now. Goro’s wedding band is a comfortable pressure under his glove. 

Today, Yusuke’s never ending quest for inspiration has brought them here, as he insisted the changing of the seasons would be bound to give him some ideas. Goro doesn’t work today, so he’d let himself be dragged along and pretended he hadn’t just been happy to spend time with his husband. 

Yusuke speaks to the vendor, exchanging words and currency and taking the food with a small bow of his head. Goro’s hand feels empty and cold without Yusuke’s in it, which is ridiculous because Yusuke is the coldest person Goro knows. Even though the Metaverse is gone, and has been gone for years now, Goro likes to think some things have remained. Yusuke never seems to get cold, even though his skin is usually freezing to the touch. Even now, his jacket lays forgotten over his left arm. 

“Let’s sit by the pond,” Goro offers, already sitting. 

“Yes, dear.”

Yusuke hands him one of the containers of yakisoba before sitting next to him. Goro presses an inch closer, and Yusuke simply looks out over the pond as they open their food and start eating. 

Neither of them have grown to be the talkative sort, rattling on for hours as some of their friends are prone to do. Goro thinks they may have grown to be quiet because of who they spend time with, Ryuji especially always seems to fill the silences they leave behind. 

Goro had never expected to make such connections, not even after things ended. He certainly tried to separate himself from them after the Metaverse collapsed, and he succeeded for a short time. And then Akira, the bastard, managed to track him down entirely on accident, and dragged him back into all his messes. But then again, he can’t complain. What he has with Yusuke never would’ve happened otherwise, and that’s the best thing he has in his life now. 

This, their comfortable silence, is something Goro loves. When they both agree wordlessly that there’s no need for words at all, and they can simply exist together without a single other expectation between them. 

Yusuke finishes eating first, standing to throw his container out before he sits back down and opens his sketchbook up. There’s a half realized sketch of a tree they’d seen earlier that had struck a chord with Yusuke. The colored leaves, half bare, something like that that Yusuke was too excited to explain to him properly. 

Yusuke flips to a new page now, and Goro only rolls his eyes now when Yusuke glances sideways at him and starts sketching the general shapes of his body. 

“What?” Yusuke hums. “It’s not my fault you’re so beautiful, my love.”

Goro is used to this, too. Yusuke telling him, usually when he’s doing something so ordinary he’d never understand what Yusuke sees in it, to stay still for just a second. At this point he doesn’t need to say it, Goro just holds his chopsticks in place in front of his face, longingly looking at the noodles that are hanging tantalizing so close. 

“This is torture,” he complains. 

“Just one moment, I need the shape...there. Continue.”

Goro shoves the bite in his mouth gratefully, and wolfs down the rest of his food like any second Yusuke will tell him to pause again. But they sit in silence, Goro eating and Yusuke sketching. 

“I think autumn is my favorite season,” Yusuke comments. 

He is rarely the first to speak up. More than often Goro is the one who will end up rambling, although once Yusuke gets set on a topic he’s prone to his own rants. 

“One moment.”

Goro stands to throw out his container, tucking his jacket a little snugger around him as he goes to sit back down. He lifts the jacket Yusuke has set next to him to steal his scarf as well, tying it around his neck. 

“Alright…” Goro turns to give Yusuke his full attention now. “Why?”

Yusuke’s eyes brighten right up, just as he had hoped they would. No doubt there’s something poetic waiting to be had, probably about life and death, about summer fading. About the inspiration Yusuke always seems to find in these months, looking around the world with such reverence like he can’t quite believe he lives in it.

“Because you came back to us in autumn.”

“What?”

“Actually, there’s something about autumn you seem to enjoy. We started dating in autumn too, you proposed to me in autumn as well…”

“That’s why?” Goro asks, because it can’t be. 

“Of course.” Yusuke turns back to his sketch and boldens a line on his face. “What other reason is there?”

“Art. The leaves changing colors, it getting cold again, some art metaphor I won’t understand no matter how many times you explain it to me,” Goro offers. 

He’s thinking Yusuke will latch onto one of the ideas, realize he’d left something out and of course that’s the reason. Say he’d forgotten about that part. It’s too much otherwise. 

Yusuke only shrugs, and flips to the page of the tree he was sketching before. It’s just lines, shapes, references of colors. Then he flips back to the one of Goro. It’s already mostly realized, the flush on his cheeks and the positions of the freckles uncannily accurate. Yusuke always says he could draw Goro’s face from memory, that he’s memorized every freckle, every blemish, the shape of him. He’s proven it before too, when Goro will be in another room and yet Yusuke is easily realizing a far too right image of him. 

The sketch in Yusuke’s hands now is just as right, his fingers brushing his hair back as he’s poised to take a bite of his food. There’s not even any scenery around him. Only shapes surrounding the pin prick image of him. 

Yusuke sometimes surprises Goro with the depths of his affections, catching him off guard at times with these things. They’ve been married for a year, but Yusuke still finds plenty of ways to get him like this. 

“Oh,” Goro says. 

It’s all he has. 

Yusuke smiles that private smile he reserves for Goro. The one that pulls up at his lip so fondly, contorting his face into something Goro has come to recognize as love. 

It’s a familiar image now, and Goro realizes...yes, he does see much more of it in autumn. Yusuke has always been so nostalgic, clinging onto things in the past and lugging them around. Goro had to learn to let go of that, so sometimes he forgets just how sentimental Yusuke is. 

“Yes, oh.” Yusuke reaches up with graphite stained fingertips to hold his face. “You are always my reason, love.”

Goro’s heart twists in his chest, and he hopelessly takes a shaky breath in before he lets it out. He drops his head down to Yusuke’s shoulder. 

“Stop it,” he grumbles. 

“Don’t be so grumpy.” Yusuke kisses the top of his head. “I am only loving you as I promised to.”

Goro’s face goes red, and he has never been one for public displays of affection. He can tolerate hand holding, and in extreme cases the closeness between them here can be tolerated. But much more, he can’t handle. 

Maybe in some regard, he’s still scared of being recognized. Although he’s long since faded from the public eye, he’s still worried Shido’s associates are lurking, just waiting for him to reappear. 

And maybe he’s just shy, maybe he’s just still grappling for any excuse to explain away the fact that he has trouble accepting the unconditional love Yusuke offers him. 

Now, he tilts his head up to kiss Yusuke. His lips are chapped, bitten raw from his bad habit of chewing his bottom lip when he’s drawing. Goro usually complains about it, but now he just pours every ounce of adoration he holds for this man into the action and hopes it comes across right. 

Yusuke smiles against his lips and kisses him back sweetly until Goro can’t do it anymore and has to pull back. 

“Let’s go home.” 

Yusuke is already standing, closing his sketchbook and collecting his jacket up to throw back over his arm. He offers his other out to Goro. 

Goro slides the glove off his left hand to take Yusuke’s, who immediately starts to fidget with the ring on his finger. 

Goro has actually never liked autumn, the way everything starts to die and get cold, before it’s acceptable to bundle up entirely and drink hot chocolate and stay inside as much as possible. He took lots of falls slipping on wet leaves, and maybe that’s where the true hatred for the season comes from. 

But, as Yusuke does, he’s been shown another way to look at something he’s hated. Yusuke shows him beauty in everything, even the worst of things. After all, Yusuke showed him the beauty in himself. 

He thinks autumn may be his favorite now, too. 

**Author's Note:**

> Okay I’m officially on the Akekita train and I’m here to STAY. I will do all the days eventually just give me a minute I just got here.


End file.
